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Thursday, April 28, 2011

For those of you in the SF Bay Area who know that I ADORE cake (despite my unfortunate run-in with The Kerry Vincent Fan Club who misinterpreted my dislike of mechanical cakes for a dislike of cake on the whole), please consider signing up for this cupcake-making class.

Because A. It's a cupcake-making class! B. A friend of mine is hosting it (WHICH PROBABLY EXPLAINS THE WINE THING), and C. I would go if I weren't going to be in the hospital with a newborn. (I might have cake anyway, though.)

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Not that you'd ever suspect I would, but I certainly did NOT get scared off by the Kerry Vincent brouhaha below. I was working hard on an "appropriate" follow-up post (um, because how DO you follow that up?) and then got sidelined and now it's long gone and no one cares about my Cake Defense anymore. I'll post it anyway, though.

Stripes are slimming, right?

In the meantime, I haven't been eaten or anything. It just...well, it occurred to me fairly recently that this pregnancy thing is, actually, going to result in HAVING A BABY.

So um. You knew this. And yeah, I had my suspicions. But pregnancy itself is such an overwhelming, encompassing thing that sometimes it feels like it's just nine months of increasing uncomfortability and no cocktails and you forget about why. "I JUST WANT THIS TO BE OVER!" those of us who prefer things like martinis and also not having the odd foot digging into our bladders all night tend to think. And THEN we remember, somewhere around eight-and-a-half months, that the end result of not being pregnant? Isn't about getting to have a martini.

I mean, you DO get to have a martini. Yay! But also! You get a child! A baby!

And then you're like, WHAT DO YOU MEAN, A BABY? WHERE IS IT GOING TO GO?

Perspective. That's what I'm saying.

The reality, my reality, is that I worry. A lot. So I spend my pregnancy thinking about pregnancy, not the awesome what-comes-after part (because I don't want to count my chicken before it hatches). Which means that one day I woke up and was all eight months pregnant and wondering, "No but really. Where IS the baby going to go?" And also, "Oh, and it will probably need diapers and stuff."

Thus, the last few weeks have been a whirlwind of organizing things we haven't touched since before Eve arrived, making 30 million lists, buying supplies, and trying to prep our home to be "ready." Which, I've discovered through my wackjob "nesting" instincts that never much presented themselves with Eve, will be "never."

I also got it into my head that we must finish painting the diningroom/entranceway.

(Probably you don't care at all about this, but some of you asked if I was okay and given what I'm about to explain, I'm not sure I can rightfully answer "yes.")

The thing is, a year ago we decided to pull up the carpet from the dining room because it was lame and also reeked of cat pee. And honestly, there's nothing you can do to rid carpet of cat pee smell other than rid yourself of the carpet entirely. It took us weeks to decide what flooring to replace the carpet with, because the floors that run through the rest of the downstairs have been discontinued because of course they have. And then there was the requisite "it's back-ordered" drama, mixed with flaky contractors and voila! Five months and all our savings later, we had a new floor!

Shortly thereafter, we decided to take the curtains down and paint the whole space, since we don't really like "flesh colored" walls. (And once you've already spent a fortune, why not just finish the job?) We thought it would be nice to have it done for Thanksgiving.

Instead, on Thanksgiving, we had giant, naked windows and five squares of paint samples smeared on three walls. FESTIVE!

And then somehow it was April.

Now I'm in this pressure-prompted, last-ditch effort to finish all unfinished everything, and have been to the paint store enough times that the grown men who work there giggle when I enter. (I am not making that up.)

And instead of a painted dining room, I have a wall that now has FIFTEEN different colors on it. YES, FIFTEEN. As though it's a modern art piece unto itself.

Please note that this is just one wall of samples.
These same colors appear in larger and smaller swatches all over the room.

I will not walk you through the mental progression that these have taken. I will not explain to you how very, very different 5 and 6 are from 11 and 12. Just know that they are. And that we have decided on #12, which is Collonade Gray by Sherwin Williams (featured left; isn't it pretty?).

Aside from drying-paint adventures (will the painters come and get the room done before the baby arrives? HAHAHAHAHA), and other housekeeping projects, we went through the process of moving Eve into a big-girl bed in a big-girl room. Which could have been a horribly traumatizing event for all of us, and yet Eve -- again -- made the transition so well and so smoothly I'm convinced the child I'm currently carrying must be some kind of hellspawn.

I say that with love, of course.

So that is what I have been up to. I'm fine, I'm just cramming nine months worth of "let's get ready for baby!" stuff into like, three weeks. While working 50+ hour weeks at my work-job-start-up and not neglecting the toddler who, when I point to my belly and say baby, looks at me like I'm a doofus who has no idea what a baby is.

(Taken with the Hipstamatic App.
Any idea why it says APR 81 or how to change that?)